Holiday

Based on Wikipedia: Holiday

The word "holiday" began as something sacred. In Old English, it was hāligdæg—literally "holy day"—a time set apart for religious observance. Today, of course, we use it to describe everything from Christmas to International Talk Like a Pirate Day. That transformation tells us something fascinating about how human societies change.

The Atlantic Divide

Before we go any further, there's a linguistic quirk worth noting. If you're American, "holiday" means a specific day of celebration—Thanksgiving, Independence Day, Memorial Day. If you're British, Australian, or from most other Commonwealth nations, "holiday" can mean what Americans call a "vacation." When a Brit says "I'm going on holiday," they're heading to Spain for a week. When an American says "Happy Holidays," they're wishing you well during the festive season from Thanksgiving through New Year's.

This isn't just a trivial difference. It reflects something deeper about how different cultures organize time off from work. In the American system, there's a sharper distinction between nationally recognized days of significance and personal leisure time. The Commonwealth approach blurs that line, treating all sanctioned time away from obligations under one umbrella term.

The Four-Thousand-Year Tradition of Starting Over

New Year's celebrations are ancient. We have evidence of them going back at least four millennia.

Think about that for a moment. Four thousand years ago, people were already marking the passage of time with collective celebration. The Babylonians celebrated their new year in spring with an eleven-day festival. The Romans moved it to January to honor Janus, the two-faced god who could see both the past and future. The Chinese New Year follows the lunar calendar, falling somewhere between late January and mid-February.

Today, New Year's Day on January 1st holds a remarkable distinction: it's the most universally observed public holiday on Earth. Every country using the Gregorian calendar recognizes it—with one exception. Israel, which follows the Hebrew calendar for religious purposes, doesn't observe January 1st as an official holiday. Their new year, Rosh Hashanah, falls in September or October.

What makes New Year's so universal? Perhaps it's the simplest of human impulses: the desire to mark transitions, to draw a line between what was and what will be, to believe that tomorrow can be different from today.

When a Religious Holiday Becomes Everyone's Holiday

Christmas presents a peculiar case study in cultural evolution.

It began, of course, as a Christian celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ. The spread of Christianity carried it around the globe—to Europe, the Americas, Africa, Australia. Today, over two billion people celebrate it, making it one of the most widely observed holidays in human history.

But here's where it gets interesting. In Britain, 61% of people celebrate Christmas in an entirely secular way. They put up trees, exchange gifts, gather with family, and eat elaborate meals—all without any religious component whatsoever. In the United States, 81% of non-Christians celebrate Christmas. These aren't people who've converted; they've simply adopted the cultural trappings while leaving the theology behind.

Japan offers perhaps the most striking example. The country is less than 2% Christian, yet Christmas has become a beloved tradition. And what's the customary Christmas meal in Japan? Fried chicken. Specifically, Kentucky Fried Chicken. A remarkably successful marketing campaign in the 1970s associated the American fast-food chain with the holiday, and now millions of Japanese families pre-order their Christmas KFC buckets weeks in advance.

This secularization process doesn't happen without friction. In the 1990s, Birmingham City Council in England promoted winter events under the brand "Winterval" to create a more multicultural atmosphere. The Bishop of Birmingham objected, arguing that "the secular world, which expresses respect for all, is actually embarrassed by faith." In the United States, some conservative commentators have labeled similar trends "the War on Christmas." The tension between a holiday's religious roots and its secular branches remains unresolved.

National Days and What They Remember

Almost every nation on Earth has designated a "national day"—a date of collective identity. The exceptions are interesting: only Denmark and the United Kingdom lack official national days, though the UK's constituent countries (England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland) have patron saint days that serve similar purposes.

What nations choose to commemorate reveals their values.

The United States celebrates July 4th, the date of its Declaration of Independence from Britain. France celebrates July 14th, Bastille Day, commemorating the 1789 storming of a prison-fortress that symbolized the overthrow of monarchy. Germany observes October 3rd, the day in 1990 when East and West Germany reunified after decades of Cold War division.

Thailand takes a different approach entirely, celebrating December 5th—the birthday of their late King Bhumibol Adulyadej, who reigned for seven decades. Belgium commemorates July 21st, the day in 1831 when Leopold I took the oath of office as the first King of the Belgians. Leopold, incidentally, was an uncle of the future Queen Victoria, making Belgium's national day essentially a celebration of entering a royal family network that would come to dominate European monarchies.

Ireland celebrates St. Patrick's Day, named for the patron saint credited with bringing Christianity to the island. This represents a different kind of national identity—one rooted not in political events but in religious and cultural tradition.

Remembering Wars

The eleventh of November carries enormous weight in nations that fought in the First World War.

On that date in 1918, at 11 a.m., the guns fell silent on the Western Front. The armistice that ended four years of unprecedented slaughter took effect at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. The symbolism was deliberate. Every year since, people in Britain, France, Canada, Australia, and other Allied and Commonwealth nations pause at that moment to remember the dead.

National leaders attend ceremonies at memorial sites. Poppies are worn, inspired by John McCrae's poem "In Flanders Fields," which described the red flowers growing over soldiers' graves. Two minutes of silence are observed.

Curiously, the end of the Second World War—May 8th, 1945, Victory in Europe Day—receives much less commemoration, despite the second conflict being far larger in scope and casualty. Perhaps the First World War, with its trenches and gas and the destruction of an entire generation of young men, traumatized Europe in ways that never fully healed. Or perhaps the clean narrative of the First World War's ending (a specific armistice at a specific time) lends itself better to ritualized remembrance than the Second World War's messier conclusion across multiple theaters.

The Calendar of Faith

Religious holidays reveal the priorities of the faiths that observe them.

For Christians, the two great holidays are Easter and Christmas—the resurrection and the birth of Jesus. But the liturgical calendar contains dozens of other feast days, saints' days, and seasons of observance. Orthodox Christians and Roman Catholics celebrate patronal feast days, where each church honors its particular patron saint on the designated date in the calendar of saints.

Islam's two major holidays are Eid al-Fitr, marking the end of Ramadan (the month of fasting), and Eid al-Adha, which concludes the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca. The timing of both follows the Islamic lunar calendar, so they shift about eleven days earlier each year relative to the Gregorian calendar.

Judaism has two holiday seasons: the spring feasts of Passover (Pesach) and Shavuot, and the fall feasts of Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, and Shemini Atzeret. Passover commemorates the Exodus from Egypt; Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, is the holiest day of the Jewish year, a time for fasting and repentance.

Hindus, Jains, and Sikhs share some holidays while maintaining distinct traditions. Diwali, the Festival of Lights, is perhaps the most widely known, celebrated with oil lamps, fireworks, and sweets. It commemorates different things for different communities—for Hindus, it often marks the return of Rama from exile; for Sikhs, the release of Guru Hargobind from prison; for Jains, the attainment of moksha by Mahavira.

Jehovah's Witnesses present an interesting contrast. They annually commemorate "The Memorial of Jesus Christ's Death" but reject most other holidays, particularly those that have absorbed elements from non-Christian traditions or that they view as distracting from worship.

Invented Holidays

Not all holidays have ancient roots. The twentieth and twenty-first centuries have seen an explosion of newly created observances.

International Women's Day, observed on March 8th, dates to the early 1900s, emerging from socialist movements in Europe and America. It celebrates women's achievements and advocates for gender equality. The United Nations formally recognized it in 1977, and today it's a public holiday in countries including Russia, China, and Uganda.

Earth Day began in 1970, when Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson organized a nationwide environmental teach-in. Twenty million Americans participated. It has since grown into a global movement, with 10,000 events held worldwide in 2007. The holiday marks humanity's impact on the planet—pollution, deforestation, climate change—and calls for action.

The United Nations maintains an extensive calendar of international days, weeks, months, and even decades dedicated to specific causes. Some of these observances connect to solemn obligations. UN General Assembly Resolution 60/147 recognizes that commemorating events like the Holocaust (Shoah) or the end of World War II can be part of the "reparation obligation" owed to victims of gross human rights violations.

The Unofficial Holidays

Beyond the official calendars exist holidays that no government recognizes but that people celebrate anyway.

April Fools' Day on April 1st has murky origins but has been observed for centuries. People play pranks and hoaxes; newspapers publish fake stories; the gullible fall for increasingly elaborate deceptions. No one gets the day off work, but the tradition persists.

Then there are the truly absurd holidays, often promoted through social media. September 19th is International Talk Like a Pirate Day, created in 1995 by two friends in Oregon and popularized by humor columnist Dave Barry. December 14th is Monkey Day, celebrating primates and primate research. September 30th is Blasphemy Day, established by atheist groups to coincide with the anniversary of the Danish newspaper publication of cartoons depicting Muhammad.

These holidays occupy a strange cultural space. They're jokes, but jokes that people actually participate in. They demonstrate how easily holidays can be created—but also how difficult it is for invented holidays to acquire the weight and significance of established ones.

The Substitute Day Problem

What happens when a holiday falls on a weekend?

Different countries have developed different solutions. In the United Kingdom, if a bank holiday falls on Saturday or Sunday, the following Monday becomes a "substitute" bank holiday. In December 2020, Boxing Day (December 26th) fell on a Saturday, so Monday the 28th was designated the substitute day.

New Zealand has formalized this practice so thoroughly that they've given it a name: "Mondayisation." If Waitangi Day or ANZAC Day falls on a weekend, the following Monday becomes the observed holiday, ensuring workers actually receive the day off.

This seems like a minor administrative matter, but it reflects something deeper: the tension between a holiday's symbolic date (which may hold historical or religious significance) and its practical function (giving people time off from work). Do you celebrate the Battle of Wherever on its actual anniversary, or do you observe it on the nearest convenient Monday?

Holidays as Commerce

In the United States, holidays began their transformation into commercial events in the late nineteenth century.

Historian Leigh Eric Schmidt has traced how the growth of consumer culture reshaped American holidays. As department stores became the physical spaces of commercialism—the cathedrals of consumption—holidays became its temporal expression. The calendar year was reorganized around opportunities for shopping.

Christmas acquired gift-giving traditions that enriched retailers. Valentine's Day became about chocolates and greeting cards. Halloween generated costume and candy sales. Mother's Day and Father's Day emerged as occasions requiring presents. Even holidays with no obvious commercial angle, like Labor Day, became associated with sales events.

This process accelerated after the Civil War, as American industry expanded and sought new markets. The result is the holiday landscape we now inhabit, where a day's cultural significance often correlates with its retail potential.

The Meaning of a Day

So what does it mean to have a holiday?

At its simplest, a holiday is a shared pause. Society collectively agrees: on this day, we stop our ordinary activities. We mark time differently. We do something—feast, gather, remember, celebrate—that distinguishes this day from the endless procession of ordinary days.

The word itself still carries its ancient etymology. Even when we're celebrating the secular, the frivolous, or the commercial, we're participating in something fundamentally human: the desire to make certain days holy. Not necessarily holy in a religious sense, but set apart, sacred to our collective life together.

Thanksgiving Thursday arrives. The table is set. The turkey is in the oven. And for a few hours, the ordinary world recedes, replaced by something that feels—even if just for a moment—like a day that matters.